00:00:01 Rosemary

If you’ve completed or are currently enrolled in Compassionate Inquiry^® training, you’re invited to attend the third International CI Conference in Vancouver, Canada from October 30 to November 1. Dr. Gabor Maté is returning as our keynote speaker and masterclass presenter. Enjoy engaging workshops and inspiring demonstrations with Sat Dharam Kaur, CI facilitators and practitioners. Whether you join us in person for three days of shared inquiry with CI cohort partners and colleagues from around the world, or attend virtually to focus on the teachings, tap the link in the show notes to learn more, take advantage of early bird discounts and secure your place. And yes, there will be dancing.

00:00:50 Luke

What my greatest celebration as a man and a father is, I have a 12 year old son who feels safe enough to call me out and just tell me directly when I’m not present. To tell me directly when I’m not showing up, to tell me directly his own emotional states and I’m able to repair and model that, to model accountability and, man… I go to bed at night thinking, wow, I never had these kinds of conversations.

00:01:23 Warren

As a young boy in the environment that I grew up in, the kind of unconditional love and support that all young boys need was not available most of the time and was met instead with religiosity and authoritarianism and some degree of violence. The story that grew inside of me was, ‘You’re not good.’ The only way I coped with that was to try and make people happy. I started an affirmation economy that I was hard at work, still keeping afloat when my children came on the scene. Gabor gave a talk last night about parents being taught that you’re supposed to hit your kids. This is what kids need for discipline. Yeah. My predominant experience relating to masculinity as a 0 to 20 year old was fear. You should be afraid and comply and hide everything else. And that’s a pretty rough message to get about dealing with maleness, especially when you are one.

00:02:18 Luke

A lot of the raising of our young children is through devices, through media, through popular culture. We’re not taught what it means to be in connection in community as a man. So when my father’s exposed to this, he’s brought to tears, and we’re playing board games with three generations and he’s I just never knew and I’m sorry. And I said there’s no apology necessary. We’re here now and we have this time now.

00:02:47 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:03:05 SPK_4

So welcome to another edition of the Gifts of Trauma Podcast from Compassionate Inquiry^®. My name is Kevin Young, joined today by my dear colleague, J’aime Rothbard, and we are here to chat to… to kindly interrogate… get curious with another two of our colleagues, Luke Sniewski and Warren McCaig. Gentlemen, J’aime. You’re very welcome. Good to see you all. Thank you for being here.

00:03:31 Warren

It’s a joy to be here, brother.

00:03:33 Kevin

Yeah, you’re very welcome. I’m really excited. I’m really happy that you’re given me your time and given us your time. I really do consider it an act of generosity and kindness on your part to allow me to ask you some questions, and, you know, I always find these conversations are really informative and educational for me, and I hope that comes across for our listeners. I’m going to introduce you both. I’m not going to read all your formal introductions, but I just want to read a line or two from your bios and then you’re welcome to add anything that you want to. I’ll start with you Luke. Luke’s a wellbeing coach and a somatic therapist and brings together a wealth of personal, academic and professional experience into a unique approach to supporting others. His practice combines Compassionate Inquiry, somatic practices, and healthy lifestyle strategies to guide clients towards greater vitality, authenticity, and inner peace in everyday life. And Luke says that the essence of his work lies in reconnecting people with their bodies so they can access the wisdom it holds. And having had the privilege of working with a diverse range of individuals, executives, leading and facilitating yoga and meditation retreats in New Zealand for refugees, and global retreats offering immersive experiences that foster deep self exploration, while facilitating psychedelic assisted therapy provides another powerful avenue for healing, somatic reconnection, and personal growth. And Warren’s a Compassionate Inquiry practitioner who has a deep personal commitment to healing and growth. His own personal journey has been a path out of religious fundamentalism into a life of hope and joy. Warren says he’s deeply passionate about the need for community in our healing process. And today he utilizes Compassionate Inquiry, psychedelic therapy, group facilitation, and nature retreats to help clients encounter more joy, authenticity, and a sense of possibility in their everyday lives. How are those introductions landing for you both? Warren, why don’t you go first?

00:05:33 Warren

First, I’ll respond to Luke’s because this is a special podcast. Luke is…. And you as well, Kevin. It’s a joy to be here with the both of you. I’m living proof of the work that you both do in the world, as I’ve learned from both of you. I just got back from a couple weeks in New Zealand where Luke and I had a chance to do a retreat together, and the chance to be Luke’s house guest for the time preceding and following that as well, is a reminder that when you live next to somebody who’s practicing what they’re preaching, it just spills over. It’s a joy to feel that impact in my life and echoes what you read about me, which is I think we heal better in relationship and in community. In fact, I think we only heal that way. And my core guiding principle is bringing people into deep relationship that allows for them to move through the pain, the trauma, whatever’s impeding them from really living life to its fullness. And learning whatever tools I can to support that, where psychedelic therapy has certainly taken a primary role in my work of helping people shift from states of fear, scarcity, trauma, constriction, into a more open and gratitude filled life.

00:06:41 Kevin

Warren, thank you. I’d love to circle back to some of that. Luke, I’m going to come down a little second. Let’s bookmark that. Warren because the idea of being a man in the world today, it seems to be that the more I lean into this conversation, the things that are missing for men seem to be those things you mentioned: collaboration, connection, community. That seems to be really absent from the life of a lot of men and particularly young men. So let’s circle back to that in a little second. Luke, what about what I read for you? How was that to hear that intro?

00:07:14 Luke

It’s a never ending privilege to be in this line of work alongside folks like yourselves. And I think the coolest part of this job is that the constant feedback loop of learning and relating to ourselves, every client, every moment, every situation is an opportunity to dive in and explore and uncover something within ourselves, to see the empathy and the humanness in each and every one of us. And I think the, process of healing is through relationship, as Warren highlighted, but so is the process of knowing ourselves. To have our qualities mirrored, to be able to see aspects of ourselves in the work that we do with others. And you know, Warren and I, like Warren said we had the privilege of guiding a few people through some deep work here in New Zealand and to just see it’s like the Russian doll of relational containers that we’re actually juggling in these kinds of settings, where there’s the group setting and then there’s also the individual containers that we create with the people that we’re connecting with. And the container that I suppose I really started my own journey with and worked outward. It’s amazing. Warren. Started out, worked in. I started in, worked out. And the Russian doll that I’ve been most focused on is that central doll in the middle, the relational container and the relationship that we have with ourselves. And I don’t think that we can have a relationship with ourselves unless we’re reconnecting to our body, reconnecting to our somatic experience, and allowing that to be essentially a guiding truth, teacher, compass and light for us as we navigate essentially the truth of our experience, rather than stories that may have run their course, or are no longer as valid, helpful, or as useful as they used to be. Maybe in early childhood or whenever they formed.

00:09:02 SPK_4

Yeah, thanks, Luke. Maybe the arc of this conversation, I’d love to move along. I really want to get curious about you both, and allow our audience to hear just a little bit about you and then really leaning into the work you do, who you do it with, particularly focusing on, given the title of this, “How it is to be a man in the world today,” particularly focusing on men in the world. And I know you both have sons, same age, very similar age, both young men, you know, it’s just starting to be. Just both starting to be young men, starting that. That journey. Then getting curious about you both. So when I say to you the title of this podcast or what we’re leaning into is, ‘How is it to be a Man in the World Today?’ How does that land for you? What comes up when you hear that?

00:09:46 Luke

I can start with my answer, which was, I have no idea. For me, it’s been a. It’s been a bit of a process of elimination, moving through what I learned or at least unconsciously took on for my environment, whether it was culture, media, mirroring or reflecting what I was seeing from my brother or my father, and then realizing that it wasn’t really meaningful, purposeful, or satisfying. It wasn’t nourishing. That’s the word. It wasn’t nourishing me in any way. And I suppose the process of becoming a man, and specifically for me, man and father, have been very closely connected. It was really a process of experimentation and really checking in with what felt right, what landed and resonated, and what resulted in deeper connection, with my son first, really, that was like a key relationship that allowed me to explore manhood and fatherhood. And then the slow outward explorations that then turned to my wife, my intimate partner. She joined my new family later on, after Jack was 5, and then also with my own parents, with my own father. So it was interesting how becoming a man for me, started in this singular context related to my son. And then slowly I learned what it means to be a man in my world, in my universe, through that, in that direction, moving outward into other relationships.

00:11:14 Kevin

You said what I’ve learned from my brother and my father and unlearning that, and it wasn’t nourishing. Would you be more specific about that? What was it that you’d learned that it was to be a man that you had to unlearn?

00:11:27 Luke

It was definitely… And again. And I would throw our media and culture in there as well. I didn’t really grow up in a tightly knit familial unit. I didn’t really learn what family was until I got married and I married an entire Italian family. I’m like, oh, so this is family, this is connection, this is openness, this is togetherness. And I’m like, this is strange. And it was so foreign to me. I really enjoyed it. I’m like, oh, this feels nice to be in normal connection. So, growing up, whether or not they were direct downloads or just indirect nervous system impressions, or trauma responses or epigenetic things being passed down to me, but the things I thought manhood was, women and sports and emotional sort of rigidity, like zero access to my emotions. And I… And then that led to addictions that probably eroded most of the relationships in my life. And like, maybe others would vouch for, there’s singular moments that sort of serve as catalysts for tremendous change, and the moment that my son is born and he’s breathing on my chest, his first breaths, and it was just this supreme wake up call to really challenge everything I had learned about what it means to be a human. Even more than what it means to be a man, that’s been guiding me to move away from porn, to move away from just being obsessed with sports in a way that really dominated my life, to being able to speak about emotions honestly, vulnerably, and to actually have that lead to connections and conversations I never dreamt possible. That’s been life changing. So, yeah, I think that answers the question.

00:13:16 SPK_4

Beautifully. The term that’s coming up for me. Look, as you chat, there is this idea of caught and taught. Some things we were taught and some things we just caught. These… maybe subliminal unconscious messages of how it was to be a man. Yeah, we’re taught some of these and we catch some others just in the air, in the epigenetics, in the DNA. Thank you. Luke, I really appreciate that. And Warren, for yourself with that title, you know, what is it like to be a man in the world today. What comes up for you around that.

00:13:45 Warren

When you say it? Right now? I look out at the world, and I think men that are in despair are creating a despairing world. There are really damaged men, hurting men who don’t have a script of how to heal and continue to act out of a wounded concept of masculinity. And the consequences of that are horrific. You know, they’re. They’re horrific on a political scale, on an environmental scale, on an economic scale. These kind of ungrounded male energies that haven’t been, you know, haven’t been harnessed really lead to a dangerous place to live. So that’s my sense of, there’s so many despairing men in the world and despairing men in positions of leadership in the world right now.

00:14:38 Kevin

Thank you, Warren. Luke, you’ve unmuted. Do you want to add something to that? Do you want something you want to say?

00:14:42 Luke

No, I was just dropping back in. I think that speaks for itself. It definitely warrants a response from all of us because Warren’s spot on. Where we talked about, I think before we started recording this podcast, this transition or shift from competition to cooperation, to collegial cooperation, men being in cooperation rather than in constant competition. When we see this siloed individual approach to being a man and being masculine, that’s when we see the unconscious side effects, the opportunity costs that are lost and all of the things that are destroyed outside of our awareness because we’re so isolated and not connected to ourselves, to our community, to our environment. We don’t see the ramifications of some of these individual decisions.

00:15:33 Kevin

And I think through this, I mentioned on a few other of the podcasts, and I’m going to keep repeating it and ‘sorry, not sorry’ for repeating it. And I think there’s a thing that can happen when we have these conversations is that sometimes there can be a perception that we’re allowing the victims of this outworking of traumatized masculinity to be forgotten. Whether that’s women, whether that’s the environment, whether that’s wars and politics and mass immigrations and movement of people. And I just want to name, up front, that’s not the case. We’re not having this conversation so that we can forget about and move beyond the victims are the sufferers of this traumatized masculinity and patriarchy. And… I also want to steer away from blaming. You know, I don’t know that there’s any value in blaming men, there certainly is value in inviting them to take responsibility, but I don’t know that there’s any value in blame.

00:16:28 Warren

Can I jump in and challenge you on something there?

00:16:30 Kevin

Sure.

00:16:31 Warren

Men are also suffering.

00:16:32 Kevin

Yeah.

00:16:32 Warren

And suffering in huge numbers due to the dysfunctional system that they participate in. If you look at statistics around suicide, if you look at statistics around addiction and overdose, if you look at violence, and particularly in the space of war, but also in many other gang related violence, et cetera, men are disproportionately represented in ‘deaths of despair.’ The system is not working well for men either. It’s broken for everybody. It’s just some of the hyper individualistic traits that get exacerbated in men really are gasoline on the fire. I think.

00:17:12 Kevin

Thank you, Warren. And I think that’s the point of the conversation. Men are suffering. And maybe we can lean into a little bit of, you know, you’ve named it already a little bit, Warren. The system that has been set up that we’re trying to survive in. And I think that’s maybe the right word. And I want to just stay curious about you both, before we broaden the conversation out into the wider world. And Luke, you mentioned that moment of, “my son on my chest and that things have to change for me” moment. And I’d be keen to hear from you both more of those. And as you say that, look, I’m thinking, so why doesn’t that happen for every man? What’s going on in there? And I don’t know the answer. Why doesn’t every man who holds a newborn baby on his chest, why doesn’t he have that epiphany? Why doesn’t that happen for him? What’s going on for us in there? Some of us do. And that’ll lead us into the idea of being conscious men and working in this field. Why don’t all men move through that rite of passage from wild young men into mature, slightly older men?

00:18:13 Luke

Warren, you want to jump on that one first?

00:18:16 Warren

They can do… My own experience… I would like to say that the first time I held my first daughter in my arms, I was like, this is it. I better figure out something different. It didn’t happen for me. I felt love, I felt attachment. I felt the desire to be a good dad. And the overwhelming sense of shame that permeated my life at that point had such a grip on me that imagining coming out of my coping mechanisms and my sub personalities into a grounded present parenting was just an impossibility. I couldn’t have even described what that would be like. So for me, it was…  all three of my children arrived to a dad who was trying his best, but who was scattered, unable to stay present a majority of the time, and had by necessity learned to farm for attention and approval in the place of love and presence. And I think as a young boy, in the environment that I grew up in, the kind of unconditional love and support that all young boys need was not available most of the time and was met instead with religiosity and authoritarianism and some degree of violence. And the story that grew inside of me was, you’re not good, you’re not a good person. And the only way I coped with that was to try and make people happy. And I started an affirmation economy that I was hard at work, still keeping afloat when my children came on the scene. And I don’t think, without a few key relationships and a few key healing experiences, my suspicion is I would have continued to operate inside that economy until my death. At whatever stage in life that would have come to me, whether early adulthood, middle adulthood, or as in old age, if I had made it, I would have still been looking for enough outside approval to fill in the sense of emptiness on the inside. And my sense is, because we’re talking about men’s work in general, a lot of men come through my doors that would fit that exact profile. They are very low on self worth and very hard at work trying to compensate for that with success, whatever success they’ve been told success looks like accumulation of wealth, accumulation of power, accumulation of romantic partners, take your pick. But somehow trying to backfill in from a very wounded sense of self with external achievement.

00:20:57 Luke

And to build on that, I may have had a sort of a catalytic moment. We all need those catalytic moments. But it’s not oh, the work is done, as Warren shared. It’s that’s the beginning of a process. That’s when the real work starts that really undo that programming that has made that ‘more, more’ mentality the default, the acquisition and collection and external validation the norm. To move away from that was immensely painful, immensely difficult. And those very same relationships that you wish to show up more present, to be the better person, the better man, the better father, are the very same relationships that really challenge you to look at your own shit, to take accountability for your words, thoughts and actions. And just because I had that beautiful moment doesn’t make me a perfect father. What my greatest celebration as a man and a father is, I have a 12 year old son who feels safe enough to call me out on my shit and just tell me directly when I’m not present. To tell me directly when I’m not showing up, to tell me directly his own emotional states. And I’m able to repair and model that, to model accountability. And man, I go to bed at night thinking, wow, I never had these kinds of conversations. And recently… this is a bit of an interesting story. Sometimes I view my reunions with my family, with my father, my mother. I don’t see them very often. I’m in New Zealand, my mom’s in Poland. My dad’s in the States at the moment. And I haven’t seen my father in years. So whenever I reconcile or I meet up with them, like, let’s see how much work I’ve done. Let’s see how the reactivity is. Let’s see how I’m showing up. Let’s get a good test, this is the final boss stage of my little video game for personal growth and mindfulness.

00:23:00 Kevin

And I’m curious, Luke, what did you score yourself on your last method? What was the score?

00:23:05 Luke

I won’t reveal the score, but I will say this. I will say this. Spending time with my father was just a beautiful experience, to really… One thing I’ll celebrate, I’m going to pat myself on the back. I essentially taught my family how to say I love you to each other and to witness the emotional opening and vulnerability in my father and him spending time with me and my son Jack, and him being brought to tears, and the realization, what I knew, but he also came to realize is that he was never taught. We’re not taught these things. We’re modeled something. A lot of the raising of our young children is through devices, through media, through popular culture. We’re not taught what it means to be in connection, in community, as a man. So when my father’s exposed to this, he’s brought to tears and he… We’re playing board games with three generations and he’s, “I just never knew and I’m sorry.” And I said, there’s no apology necessary. We’re here now and we have this time now. And so that was like a check mark. I don’t know if I scored myself, but I was pretty happy with how my son became this catalyst for healing between generations. It was a really powerful moment.

00:24:19 Kevin

I don’t know about your fathers and their use of social media. My dad uses it and I thought, oh, man. But he sent me a little meme and it was beautiful. It was only about two weeks ago. He sent me a little meme that said, “The greatest gift of being a dad is seeing your son grow up as a compassionate and loving human being.” And it nearly knocked me off my seat because I am not used to hearing that from my dad. It’s just not the lingo. It’s just not how we converse. It’s not the lingo we use. And maybe adding that into our conversation of role models and being supported. You both mentioned that. Being seen, being heard, being taught how to express yourself emotionally, that it’s okay, that you’re safe. I’m not sure that I ever had those experiences. Warren, I want to swing back to something you said, and there’s two questions coming here, but the first one is when you spoke of yourself, and I hear you being compassionate to that version of yourself. When his kids were born, here was a man just doing his best. But at the time, I hear you reflecting on that now, you’re looking back on that version of yourself. But I’m curious, at the time, were you aware of things like shame? Were you aware that you were having that experience? Was that something that you had awareness of? Or were you just moving through that and surviving in any way you could?

00:25:31 Warren

There was a transitional point, so I would say through my 20s, I had no idea. I just knew I didn’t feel that good most of the time. And that I could experience temporary relief from not feeling that good, either by high risk activities, extreme motorcycling, skiing, give me some kind of intensity to cut through the inner noise, or sometimes by being of service was a relief to that feeling. And so I chose a career in service. And it was insufficient to sustain any level of peace inside of me. And in my 30s, I got help. I had an affair. That was scandalous. As someone who had spent a long time trying to earn approval and look good in everybody’s eyes, that wasn’t a particularly great move. Now, in hindsight, I’m thankful for all the learning and the fact that it ultimately was the first brick out of the wall of building my life on other people’s approval. Because it was like, you’re not gonna…. You’re not gonna earn your way back from this one. But at the time, it was shocking to me, and I was trying to make sense of, why would I choose this? Why would I pick this in the life that I have? And as I got some good help and some decent therapy, it was like, “Oh, because I feel shame constantly.” Somebody helped me get a bit of a zoom out on my life, and it was like yeah. “When’s the last time you felt like you were a good person to your core?” And I was like, that’s. What are you talking about? What are you referring to when you say that? I don’t know what that means. Sometimes I feel less bad. But the idea of feeling good all the way to one center was a foreign language. And it got me started on a path of, okay, first I gotta identify what in the world is happening in my nervous system and why. And then, is there anything that could be done about it? Am I doomed to live this way? Luke’s talking about his experience with Jack, and I just had a chance to see them together. My predominant emotional experience of my father was fear. I was afraid of him, not because he was always angry and violent, but because you never knew when he was going to be. So it was like, okay, even if we’re having a nice day, how far are we away from not having a nice day? And so you’re on edge, and mixed up in that religious world, which it doesn’t have to be religion. I‘ve met many clients for whom it’s just authoritarianism of a different stripe. But mixed up in that world is, I’m being violent with you because you deserve it. This is what parents are supposed to do. Gabor gave a talk last night about parents being taught, you’re supposed to hit your kids. This is what kids need for discipline. And my, yeah, my predominant experience relating to masculinity as a 0 to 20 year old was fear. You should be afraid and comply, and hide everything else. And that’s a pretty rough message to get about dealing with maleness, especially when you are one. It was not a good start point, Warren.

00:28:40 Kevin

There’s something in me. And. Yeah, maybe I’ll just say it. There’s something to me. I’m checking myself as a. How would I want to say that? But. But I do. I just want to say I’m sorry. That was your experience.

00:28:48 Warren

I’ll take it. Yeah.

00:28:50 Warren

I’m sorry that was my experience, too. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not anything that anybody should live at. In this season of my life, I’m a pretty big believer in Kintsugi. You know, it was Japanese art. When ceramic gets broken and they put it back together with gold and it’s worth more than it was when it started. I think the depth of my compassion for people was profoundly forged in those experiences. I care when people are afraid because I know what it feels like. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. By jokingly, you guys are talking. Luke’s talking about teaching his dad to say I love you. I heard a comedian jokingly say a while back, I tell my kids I love them more than my dad ever talked to me. And I think that might actually be true. I bet if I summed up the number of times I’ve told my kids I love them in one form or another, it would probably add up to more words than I heard from my dad in the time that he was alive. It’s a different way of relating.

00:29:46 J’aime

I gotta ask a question here. Between the father – son stream that everybody is on, that I’m really loving Father – son, the father – son thread, to be like in this generation, to have a father that maybe you’ve said you love your children more than you’ve heard or even expressed anything. To be on this weird in between threshold and then have this generation and I also have a 12 year old son. So I’m right here with you guys. Let me take a little side story. The Manosphere. Have you seen it? Louis Theron all right, can we agree that it wasn’t terrifying at all to watch these misogynist guys like influencers? We’ve all seen that. What’s the scariest part for you guys of that show? Call it out. Tell me what was scary for you.

00:30:39 Luke

That it’s believable for more and more young men, because of the absence of teachers and role models and figures that are there walking and guiding our next generation of young men into manhood. In a responsible way, in an ethical, responsible and moral way, but related to themselves. They have no idea yet, and hopefully they will, the extent to which that is self harm, not just negligence of everything around you. It actually erodes our sense of self. And when we get into that cycle of external validation and accumulation that Warren spoke about, it takes no prisoners. All the relationships, the meaningful ones, begin to disintegrate, deteriorate, because they’re grounded on a flimsy foundation.

00:31:31 J’aime

Warren, do you want to add anything?

00:31:33 Warren

Sure I do. Yeah. I’m less scared than I am sad, because all people, but I think young men in particular, need purpose. They need something to orient themselves towards. This is why video games are popular. I’m questing, leveling up. I’m unlocking something. I’m gaining new skills. Even if it’s all fictitious, it triggers this part of a young man’s psychology that says ‘I’m achieving something’. So we’ve created a digital substitute for achievement because we don’t know what to point people towards. And when you look at the manosphere you have a bunch of wounded boys who have not grown up. Whether they’re 40 or 50 or 30 or whatever they are, they’re boys. And their drive to do something has been oriented towards the most basic hedonistic concept of the world. So it’s like, okay, what else am I supposed to do with this drive? Well, it must be to get a fancier car, and more women around me, and more fans. And not even fans for athletic achievement or musical talent fans for fans sake. Fame, for the sake of having a bigger number. And it’s. It just makes me sad. It’s like to me, if I walked into the kitchen and saw somebody who was just eating sugar out of the jar and didn’t realize that you could cook something. And it’s like you realize there’s an entire culinary world to be experienced and you’re just eating sugar. This is what these guys are doing. It’s like having the most base, misguided concept of what sexuality is, what the human experience is. You’ve drained life of its depth and nuance and color because no one’s ever showed you that life can be about something else. And then you’ve got a bunch of lonely, purposeless boys who don’t know what to do with themselves, and they gravitate to it because it’s better than nothing. It’s no different than the, for me, than the energy that drives dysfunctional, authoritarian, populist political leaders. It’s at least somebody recognizes that I have angst. Somebody recognizes that I have angst, and they give me something to do with it. So rather than people just ignoring me or telling me everything’s fine, this guy says, yeah, you feel real bad about yourself. The reason is because you don’t have a Ferrari yet. Okay, that’s better than nobody acknowledging my pain at all. So it’s a poorly fitting band-aid, but it’s, for many people, better than being left to bleed out. So it just makes me sad.

00:34:07 J’aime

Okay, my turn. Let me talk about what terrified me, watching that show, that documentary, was when these influencer guys, multiple examples, instances, went out on the street. Hordes of young boys a couple years within the ages of our boys, knew their names, said, you’re my hero, I hate faggots. Just started drilling off all these, again, kind of ways to get, like, strokes and affirmation and attention back to them. And that really scared me. It really scared me to think that there’s just… I tend to watch those people and feel like they’re harmless on one level, because they’re so bloated and exaggerated. But when I see that they’re actually role models for boys the age of my son, or friends, potential friends of my son’s that I have no control over, it’s out of my house. That’s really scary to me. And I’d love to, like, just keep going on something you mentioned… what I heard you say, Warren, is that boys like to gamify, they like to play the video games because they’re exercising all of this opportunity to test and push and get, get validated and succeed. And what that makes me think about is, what I think about often, is I feel there’s a rite of passage that’s missing for young boys going into man. And like, let me see those heads nod from all of you that, okay, like, when we learn about that in anthropology, we think, oh God, this is what we need in our culture, that we don’t have. And so I want to take that back to you guys who have gone through your own moments of awakening into manhood, through being fathers. What do you think about rites of passage?

00:35:57 Luke

I was just talking about this with Jack, my son, the other day. And how enthusiastic… and he’s going to be turning 13 and you’re a teenager and we were talking about doing a rite of passage together. There’s father, son, sort of guided camping, retreat experiences to facilitate such a process. And I think that would be just so much fun. And he was just on board. And I can imagine a reality where that rite of passage stretches and there’s another one later at 18, and to really symbolically orient his psyche and his purpose and his direction in the direction of values and qualities that are actually going to serve himself and serve the world around him. Warren talked about sad, you talked about scared. I mentioned that a little bit, but I was actually shocked and surprised when I saw children essentially idolizing this kind of behavior. And I’m like, what? Where’s this coming from? So I hope a documentary like that serves as a bit of a wake up call for the men and the fathers to say, wait a second, maybe I should be a little more interested in what my child is consuming. Not food, but consuming in terms of content and how that’s shaping their values and their goalposts for what’s driving them in life.

00:37:13 Kevin

Thank you, Luke. I think what you’re raising, J’aime, is the very center of the discussion and maybe even the series of what is it to be a man in the world today? And when you ask about those young boys being influenced by and holding as role models, these influencers, the question has to be, “Why? Why wouldn’t a young person be connected enough to themselves to know in their gut, I don’t like that. I don’t like how he’s speaking. I don’t like how he’s acting. That doesn’t make me feel good.” And that’s a soft curious why. It’s not an accusatory why. It’s a soft why. Why isn’t that the case? Why isn’t a young boy or even a young man able to go, “Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that sense.” And I just want to fire a little quote before I come to Warren. As you’re chatting again, J’aime, actually, as you’re all chatting, it’s my favorite quote from The Presence Process, by Michael Brown. And he says, the first consequence of charged emotion is drama. And drama is reactive projection, either mental, emotional, or physical, that we use to gain attention from the outside world that we can’t yet give ourselves. So when there’s something happening for us in here and we’re not able to attend to it because we haven’t been taught how to attend to it, that then gets projected into the outside world so that it can get seen. What? Warren, you said, “At least they can see my angst. At least.” And that’s an unconscious thing. When this thing’s happening inside, if we’re not attending to it, it gets projected into the outside world, and quite often violently, quite often with destruction for the environment and the people around us. So I think what you’re asking, J’aime, is really central to the conversation. What is it to be a man in the world today? And why are a lot of us causing harm? And maybe it’s because what is happening inside of us isn’t being attended to. We don’t have the language for it. We don’t have the ability to address it, and I just wanted to drop that in, Warren. I know J’aime was keen to hear from you.

00:39:18 Warren

Yeah. And around rites, the rites of passage. The rite of passage question to me is central, but you have to have something to give somebody a passage into. So if we look at cultures that do this successfully, there is a transition from childhood level of responsibility and childhood level of privilege into adult level of responsibility and adult level of privilege. So it’s… You go through this experience, and on the other side of it, you’re now accountable to the community for a whole new set of things, and there’s a whole new set of things that are now available to you in terms of experiences that you couldn’t have accessed as a child. And so you’re invited into a shared mutual accountability and community holding, and a bunch of things that make your life more rich and enjoyable. Now we have, in the Western European context, intentionally or otherwise, dismembered most tentposts of meaning that make sense of what life is about. So what is it that we’re inviting? What would we be giving men a transition into? You give them a rite of passage from childhood into what exactly? Into a set of integrated community where you’re responsible for the well being of your neighbors? Show me where that’s happening. Look who is the President of the United States. You want to invite people into adult manhood? Look at the men that represent us. They’re the worst of us. You have to invite people into something through a rite of passage. And what would be needed for men is, “Here’s how you now serve your community.” What’s the missing ingredient? Community. If my life is I’m an isolated island of pure individualism in pursuit of my own pleasure and in pursuit of my own security, and I don’t have a community and I don’t belong to a community, there’s nothing to invite somebody into. And this to me is the meta crisis that sits behind the male experience… is if we don’t have a sense of greater belonging and responsibility to one another, we don’t have anywhere to point our energy besides to consumption of more and more novel experiences, or an accumulation of wealth, both of which are pretty empty channels to go down. So the absence of a social fabric that gives me an orientation of “Who am I, and what am I doing here?” Is fundamental to this issue.

00:41:49 Luke

That can sound big, but it starts at home, in the family, the community at home. How do you initiate children into having role, responsibility and privilege within the family unit? That’s where it starts. And it can grow, grow outward from there. But if that’s lacking because we have TikTok and Instagram essentially dominating the interactions with our own children, they’re spending more time engaging with influencers and getting more attention and having their emotional problems seen, as Warren mentioned, angst. And then that’s where they’re turning their attention to, and walking towards that. I think it has to start in the home. That’s where community starts. How do you create that? A rite of passage within the home could be a beautiful thing. This is how we now orient as a family unit. These are the shifting roles and responsibilities, and as Warren said, privileges.

00:42:43 J’aime

Again, we’re so isolated, right? That I think…

00:42:45 Luke

Even at home.

00:42:47 J’aime

Right. We need actually more help doing all of the things like me, for sure. I need someone to do the dishes. It could be that kind of. I’m telling my son right now, if you’re going to have an opinion that strong, then I honor that. But also, it gets to come along with that inner. That discernment and wanting particular things is a willingness to do a little bit more. I feel like some of that responsibility can be, like, just looking like that. Me. You see me doing all of this. Don’t watch me. You’re smart enough to know what’s happening. It’s time to step in.

00:43:27 Luke

I love that. I love that it’s an invitation for participation, but it’s also us modeling that through action and words. With Jack, I’m like, hey, we’re a team. This is what we’re doing. This is part of the team. And how do we co-create and contribute to that? And of course, it requires reminders, as it will, with young men and young boys learning, young children learning this. But…so I hear and feel what you’re saying, J’aime.

00:43:52 J’aime

And that word ‘team,’ I think, is like, there’s something that’s got a lot of longitude and latitude in using that word. Because before social media and influencers, there were football clubs. This is what I’m watching. That is the closest rite of passage, of safe male expression that’s been generations deep is I’m in England right now. So I see all these British Football club supporters and, like, that is where I see the range of male emotion playing down. In the…. I’m like, “Oh, that’s where it happens.” That’s where it’s okay to express all of these different parts of sadness and anger. And all of this comes unboxed in this British culture in this container of a football club. And so, like, how can we harness. Harness that? Yeah, I’ll just leave that right there.

00:44:41 Luke

I’ve learned to lead by example. That’s exactly where my son learned that it’s safe to express emotion, because I learned that it’s okay for my emotions to be shared and spoken about in the presence of my family. So I think it has to start in that context. Otherwise, like you said, it’s all siloed, individual, hidden, repressed, pushed down. And then you end up in a situation where a child doesn’t… like Warren said, they say I love you to their own children more in more volume than they were they received in total words from their own father.

00:45:18 Kevin

I had a little thought there, listening to you all chatting about this. I’ve raised daughters, maybe it’s not that much different, but… And in our family, I don’t know what to say when you’re spaces and places and cultures, but eating together, quite often there is a kid’s table and an adult’s table. The kids sit at the kids table. And I just had this idea of that rite of passage, maybe imagining Jack or your son Warren going off on one of these son and dad retreats and coming back, and one of the movements was, okay, you know, you now sit at the adult table, you don’t sit at the kid table anymore, you’re up here. And with that, the responsibility is a different type of behavior. And the reward is you’re invited into different types of conversations and decision making things around the home and what’s going to happen with the family and how do we spend our money, etc. That sort of thing. Just had that visualization going on in my head. Folks. I want to take maybe just a minute or two and look outwards then. So you both work with a lot of people, you both teach a lot of people. And then in your own private work, your retreat work, your individual clients, and… So should there be a young man out there listening to this conversation. And I guess they’re not going to be 12 or 13, but 20, 25, 30, 35, and they happen to listen to this, or maybe there’s someone out there who passed this on to a young man and say, hey, maybe listen to those dudes talking for a while. So if someone listens to this and they think, yeah, they’re kind of talking about me. I’m that neoliberal, selfish, doing my own thing, playing my video games, chasing one experience after the other… and they listen to this, what might they do? 

00:46:56 Warren

Okay, I’ll jump in. Find some people to engage with in life that are oriented towards something bigger. Find some people that are on the healing path they can resonate and connect to, and find a place to be of service. The absence of service in the average person’s life robs them of so much meaning and growth. We just grow when we’re in service to other people. It de-centers our own suffering from the kind of principal narrative of our life and allows us to view the world with a different lens. We can see how fortunate we are when we step in to support people in their time of difficulty. And I apprentice people in this process because I think it’s fundamental, that as part of people’s healing journey, at some point we stop talking primarily about their healing journey and we check in on it when we need to, but we orient them towards something that begins to fill their life with meaning in a different way. So, yeah, I would encourage men to find a healing retreat. I would encourage them to find… it’s what why Luke and I do what we do, I think are right in the center of that is because we believe profoundly that change is possible in every case. And so, yeah, if you’re a young guy or an old guy whose life seems to be caught up in a dissatisfying, repetitive cycle, guess what? Some of us are finding our way off of that cycle and we’re supporting each other to get off of that cycle. And we happily support someone else to step off of that.

00:48:26 Rosemary

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00:48:36 Kevin

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00:49:46 Kevin

Thank you, Warren.

00:49:47 Luke

Thanks Warren. What I really appreciate about the way Warren and I show up, we’re showing up, we’re looking at the same phenomenon from two relational lenses. And I love that Warren tends to speak of the relational component. I tend to dive into the body-somatic-individual-personal perspective. And you know the reason why? When we started this conversation, you said I asked you, “What are we going to talk? What are we going to talk about?” I’m like, I have no idea what it means to be a man. I just for me it was a process of self discovery. And if I’m going to give any advice to anyone watching, starting a journey like this, it’s to first question, challenge and dismantle the beliefs and the structures that aren’t you. That’s the stuff getting in the way. The things that we learned that were passed down to us that actually aren’t our identities. We didn’t choose to put those programs there and through that process of self inquiry, of self discovery, then something new emerges. And for me, that’s the unique expression of manhood and masculinity that every male or person has to find on their own. It’s not something that can just be. It’s not a template. It’s just gonna look different for every person within their life. And that’s a good thing. We want diverse expressions of what it means to be a human, what it means to be a man, rather than something that’s just a cookie cutter approach to this all important journey of men.

00:51:16 Kevin

There’s something that’s coming up for me, as I sit and watch you both sitting there, the phrase ‘together alone’ maybe joins what you’re both saying. And I agree. I think it has to be a solo search. And I think that solo search is deeply supported by a community that we do this together, alone. And maybe there’s something in there. And something else I wanted to add was when I think of me being 10, 12, 14, 18, 22, 25, and there were people like me who were a little bit off the rails or a big bit off the rails. And then the people that might have been doing it different were so far removed from me, they were so far in the other direction.

00:52:02 Kevin

I’m like, I am…What I couldn’t even speak to those people. There’s nothing about that person that would attract me towards them. But it seems today, and maybe something I want to celebrate is that there are some really cool, badass people out there doing really cool men’s work, supporting men. And even when I look at you two, you’re not there wearing your collared shirt and your tie and talking about things that young people wouldn’t understand. So maybe that’s an appeal to people to say that there are people out there that aren’t so frumpy or fuddy-duddy or conservative. There are really cool, badass men out there who are willing to help. And I just want to say that too, Warren, you look like you had something you wanted to add.

00:52:50 Luke

We’re really cool, badass men. Go for it. Warren.

00:52:53 Warren

I was going to say. I’ll let you keep that. People who know me know I’m far too much of a nerd to take that title on.

00:52:58 Kevin

But, even that, Warren, even that, even to be able to relate to someone who’s nerdy and sciency, and I know you love technology and even someone that is in that field but yet is still wanting to live a life of a conscious man. I think that’s pretty cool too.

00:53:16 Warren

Yeah. How fortunate are we? I’ll speak for all of us on this call to guide people towards an informed hope. There’s really grounded reasons to be hopeful. And my life, on average ,on a daily basis exceeds what my 20 year old self could have imagined as a quality of life by orders of magnitude. My life is more full of gratitude, love, play, abundance, curiosity… It’s just way better. I would not trade my life for Elon Musk’s life, for all of Elon Musk’s money. There’s no way, because it wouldn’t appeal to me to trade the depth of relationship and the depth of learning and the experience of overcoming hardship to just have ‘cartoon villain’ amounts of money in my vault. It’s just a better life. My sense is we get to hold the torch for people. We get to hold the lantern and say, yeah. If you embark with seriousness, as Luke says, first on knowing yourself and listening to yourself and getting to know your body and all of these things, and you step into community with people that are committed to growing, you’ll grow. And your life can get way better. There will be loss, there will be pain, there will be rebirthing experiences that are super tough. But on the far side of that, is a life where you get to be yourself, which is as good of a gift as you could ever receive.

00:54:42 Kevin

Thank you both. Maybe I’ll ask my… My. My favorite final question. I think I need to find a new final question because I think this final question is starting to become so known that it doesn’t surprise people anymore. Before I do, J’ame, again, I’m conscious of just having your voice in this conversation. How are you doing with this? Is there anything else you want to add or ask?

00:55:01 J’aime

Yeah, I would just say, can you tailor that last question to a specific gender of humanity?

00:55:09 Kevin

Maybe I’ve got a better idea. J’aime, why don’t you ask the question?

00:55:12 Luke

How would that be?

00:55:13 Kevin

Go on. I’d love to pass that.

00:55:14 Luke

Go on.

00:55:15 Kevin

Let’s do that.

00:55:16 J’aime

I’ll ask Warren first, but I’m going to tailor it. Warren, if you had the ear of all women, what would you whisper?

00:55:26 Warren

Wait for us. We’re working on it. Not all guys have given up yet.

00:55:31 Kevin

Yeah.

00:55:32 Luke

You know, I’m going to share a moment where there’s a part of me that gets a little activated and triggered. Sometimes the men as a whole get put into a bit of a box in terms of how we treat, relate to women specifically, the world, generally… each other. And I remember I was in a psychedelic session and the client shared something that was absolutely just horrifying and traumatic, and I won’t share the details. And it touched me in a way that, you know, the part of me that was saying “Not all men were like that was just extinguished.” And I. In that moment, I just said, I am sorry on behalf of all of men, on all men, I’m just sorry that ever happened to you and that men did that. And maybe that’s what I would whisper as a stance of empathy and understanding alongside what Warren has just shared.

00:56:34 Kevin

Yeah, I’d like to answer your question as well, J’aime, can I. I don’t often get to answer this question, and I think it would probably be something similar to what Luke and Warren have shared. And I think I would say, “We’re sorry, Please forgive us. We need your help.” I think that’s what I’d say. And I wonder then, would it be a different answer? Maybe we’ll make this short. Would it be a different answer if I was to ask you, if you had the ear, of the men in humanity, what would you whisper? We’ll get Luke to go first this time, just to make it even.

00:57:05 Luke

I thought you were going to J’aime. I thought J’aime was gonna answer the question.

00:57:08 SPK_4

Maybe J’aime can answer this too. We’ll swing around to J’aime as well.

00:57:12 Luke

If I had the ear of all men, yeah, I would say open up. I think so much of what is happening is the result of closing down, isolating and believing the ridiculous stories in our head. And sometimes just opening up and sharing can create enough space, some breathing room for release, for processing, for curiosity to find its way through. So open up.

00:57:42 Kevin

Warren.

00:57:43 Warren

Yeah, it dov tails right in there. It would be, you’re not uniquely broken, and we can do it together. You know, the number of men that I sit with whose deep underlying story is, you know, “I’m the most shameful, the most broken, the most… If my community knew me, if my wife really knew me, if my. I’d be rejected, I’d be exiled, I’d be…” And they’re fueled by this sense of they have to hide their true selves to have any relationship. So to bring that out and say, yeah, you’re not any worse than the rest of us. We can walk out of that space together..would be the thing.

00:58:21 Kevin

Thank you, Warren. J’aime,.

00:58:26 J’aime

I would say you are deeply, tremendously, infallibly, lovable as you are, who you are. You are lovable. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to live in a world of love. You are lovable.

00:58:49 Kevin

Thank you, J’aime. Warren. Please? You wanted to say something?

00:58:52 Warren

I do this for a living. And I’ll tell you how absent that message is in the world of men that… I felt tears when you said that. That’s how much men need that message, regardless of how much they’re working or working on themselves or trying to show up. It’s just an important message. So thank you for that.

00:59:09 Kevin

And thanks, Warren. Yeah, maybe with that, I will just offer my thanks, gratitude, sincere and honest and deep felt thanks. It inspires me. Oh, I just felt a little ripple of emotion from my belly to my throat there. It inspires me and makes me proud of myself, to know that I know people like you both. And J’aime, my colleague. This is awesome. I get to know people like this. I must be… I must be all right. What’s that thing about? Show me the five people that you hang out with and have conversation with, and I’ll show you what you like. And when I look around and see some of the people that I get to hang out with and spend time with, it makes me proud of myself. I’m like, wow, that’s pretty good. So thank you. Thank you for gifting me that today. And let me just name you both in response to that. Warren McCaig. Thank you. Luke Sniewski. Thank you. J’aime Rothbard. Thank you. Thank you all for being on this edition of the Gifts of Trauma podcast from Compassionate Inquiry^®. And we look forward to seeing you all again soon. Much love. And take care.

01:00:14 J’aime

I think we need a retreat series.

01:00:16 Luke

Let’s do it.

01:00:17 J’aime

We’ll just get you guys back soon for that.

01:00:19 Warren

It’s all happening.

01:00:20 Kevin

Sounds like a plan.

01:00:21 Warren

Cheers. Yeah, schedule it up. You’ll find me there.

01:00:24 Kevin

Hey. Thank you all. Please take care of yourselves, guys. You are loved. As Jam told us, you’re loved. We are loved. See you all soon. Please take care.

01:00:32 J’aime

Thank you. Kevin Young.

01:00:33 Warren

Thanks, Kevin.

01:00:34 Luke

Bye.

01:00:35 Kevin

Thank you, J’aime.

01:00:46 Rosemary

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